


A Crucible Of Doubt

by hit_the_books



Series: Blood and Gold [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Reader-Insert, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:33:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hit_the_books/pseuds/hit_the_books
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This part takes place around and after season 9 episode “Thinman”.</p><p>You're an alchemist, perhaps one of the most gifted of this age. Living with Sam and Dean in the Bunker for several months, the three of you still don’t know quite what you have. Resouled and cracking on with your research, you can almost see a light on the horizon.</p><p>But what about the darkness: how will you get through that?</p><p>Read on to find out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Masked

Vapours fill the Bunker’s lab and you are hoping that neither of the guys walk in without some kind of breathing mask on. Your lungs are shredding and renewing without you hardly noticing, but you can’t risk being masked, else you might miss the tiniest changes in the fumes that will tell you that the process is finished.

Sweat beads your brow and you keep breathing the lethal fumes in, sifting through their various chemical odours, trying to place if the change has begun. The werewolf paw from Vegas is on the lab bench, resealed after you teased a single hair from it earlier. There’s a maze of glass tubes, flasks and crucibles in front of you, a single Bunsen burner alight and you are waiting patiently. So, so patiently.

His hand gently touches you on your right shoulder and you lean into it, recognising Sam’s scent - all books and spinach - and you rub the side of your head on his hand.

“I hope you’ve put on one of the masks I left outside,” you murmur, training your senses back on the assortment of chemical processes happening in front of you.

“Yep,” Sam replies, sounding like he has a cold, the mask muffling his speech. He moves his right fingers slightly under your head and strokes the side of your face.

You smile into Sam’s right fingers and Sam sneaks his left arm around your middle, placing his left hand on the top of your left thigh.

“Sam, you know I’m trying to work on something, right?”

“Yep.”

He presses into you slightly from behind, and you try to ignore him just enough so that you can keep track of what’s happening in front of you. You’d been in the lab for several hours already, having gone in there straight after trying to call Karen. She’d picked up and said hi, but you’d been unable to garble any words out in response and hung up as soon as she’d spoken.

Even with your soul back, it was going to take time before you’d be in the right headspace before you could really try to mend that bridge.

Sam’s left hand starts sliding further down your thigh as he gently begins bending you towards the lab bench. You shudder in pleasure at his touch, but still try to focus on what’s happening in the flask at the centre of this tubed maze, still filled with clear liquid.

And then it hits you. The smell you’d been waiting for - almost like singed skin. You use a pair of tongs to slip the flask out of the heat and put it carefully down on a fireproof mat. Grabbing a pyrex oven dish, you pour the flask’s now pinkish contents into the dish, letting it ooze in and put the dish over to one side so that its contents can begin to set. Finally you lean over to turn off the Bunsen.

“Isn’t that stuff the wrong colour for crystal meth?” Sam jokes from behind his mask.

You turn round in Sam’s arms and look up at him, his face hidden. “Since when have you had the time to catch up on the adventures of Heisenberg?”

“Oh, y’know, sometimes I can’t sleep and, well…”

“U-huh… Well, we can leave here now.”

“Right, right,” Sam pulls away slightly and starts leading the way out of the lab.

Outside and in the adjoining hallway, Sam pulls off his mask and hangs it beside the lab doorway.

There’s red circles around his eyes where the mask bit into his skin slightly to form a seal. You inform him that he is doing a slight panda impression and this earns you the first dig of Sam’s fingers into your ribs as he attempts to tickle you, pushing you against the wall outside the lab.

“Not a panda…”

“To-ta-ll-y a p-an-da!” You reply between short sharp breaths, trying not to give Sam the satisfaction of crumbling into a screaming, laughing heap at his feet.

Sam leans in closer, bending, and tries to get you in the one place where you are unbelievably ticklish. The backs of your knees, but as he zeroes in on this prized location, he jerks up and looks down at you, hands removed from your sides.

“Okay, I think we need to dump you in the shower, about now,” he says, as you look up at him and see a slither of blood trickling down his nose, which he quickly wipes away. “Am I going to be okay?” He asks, looking at the blood on his hand.

“Yeah, the residual stuff doesn’t kill… my clothes better go straight in the wash too.” You give Sam the most sheepish look imaginable.

“You have two minutes to get in the showers… start running,” Sam says in a mock angry voice. “And we’re leaving for Washington in an hour, so we better make this a quick one…”

You start running. And then something slams into the side of your head.

Blackness.

“I thought I’d lost you for a minute, but apparently not.” The woman’s voice is familiar, you open your eyes.

You’re inside an old warehouse. Your wrists and feet cuffed to an old medical examination table. You’re naked, bar your necklace, which is dangling down to the table.. Harriet leans over you, her face is smeared with some of your blood. Your eyes drift down and stop, the strange sensations playing out inside you telling you all you need to know as your eyes drift to the left of Harriet and see the bloody bone saws and scalpels on a trolley.

“Look, just let me go, please,” you whimper.

“No, not until I figure out what kind of monster you are.”

You look at Harriet and a low anger begins to burn, as you begin to wish that you’d not bothered to help save the hunter’s life and just left her to the ghouls. “I’m not a monster, Harriet.”

“You must be a witch!” Harriet snarls.

Painfully, you laugh, your outside insides jiggling as you do. “You have no idea do you? I’m an alchemist. Big difference. Big, big difference.”


	2. Fingers

“I pray that you set up those bodies good enough for the cops,” Sam grumbled as Dean drove the Impala to the town’s bus station, rain pouring. The dark of the evening upon them.

“Hey, I’m a damn artist! It’ll be fine.”

“Fuck,” Harry muttered from the backseat.

“Hey, everything is cool,” Dean said as the Impala neared the bus station. “Everything.”

Dean pulled the car up beside the sidewalk and Harry dragged his bag out of the backseat with him. Sam swallowed slightly as the former Ghostfacer team member idled up to his window. Sam wound it down.

“Well, thanks for the lift guys. Uh, take care.”

“You too,” Dean replied. Harry gave a nervous smile and started walking towards the ticket office.

As Dean pulled the Impala away, Sam wound his window back up and thought about what Harry had said about having someone beside you for so long and then realising they’re no longer there. But he didn’t want to talk about it with Dean now, not while they were on the way back to the motel to pick up Y/N.

“I think I need pie,” Dean mumbled. “Do you think Y/N will want pie?”

Sam looked to his brother and took a deep breath. “Yeah, sure, let’s stop for pie.” And for a moment, Sam realised no one was going anywhere for the moment while Y/N kept the three of them tethered together.

“Do you think she’ll want cherry or chocolate and peanut butter?” Dean asked without taking his eyes off of the road.

Sam thought about this seriously. He knew Y/N would have been busy reading up on research while back in the motel and that normally meant she’d appreciate a huge sugar hit, more than what a cherry pie could provide.

“Chocolate and peanut butter, if we can find it.”

“Yeah, you’re right... she’ll want the sugar.”

The pair of them settled back into near silence. The Impala’s tyres on tarmac and the hum of the engine the only noise. There was a decent diner near their motel, and so when Dean pulled up so that Sam could get out and buy some pie, Sam was glad that he would soon have Y/N in his arms.

Stepping into the diner, Sam went over to the pies and scoped out the peanut butter and chocolate for Y/N, the cherry for Dean and then thought about whether he’d succumb as well. Then he remembered that Y/N probably wouldn’t finish all of her pie, so…

“So, darling, what can I get ya?” Asked the waitress.

“Could I get a slice of cherry pie, a slice of peanut butter and chocolate, and a cup of black coffee to go, please?” Sam asked, as he began pulling some bills out of his back pocket.

Sam turned and looked out into the diner’s parking lot. Dean waved at him from the Impala and Sam smiled. There were times, Sam had to admit, when going into a diner by himself like this still made him feel a tiny bit uncomfortable, but at least Dean could see him.

The waitress placed Sam’s orders on the counter and totalled up what he owed. Handing the cash over, Sam gave a look back to Dean sat in the Impala and saw him talking on his cell. His expression was mixed. Sam frowned as he took his change and picked up his order.

Dean was hanging up as Sam, opened the front passenger door and slid into the Impala, carefully balancing the pie and coffee as he went. “Everything okay?” He asked Dean as he got his coffee into a safe position.

“Yeah, yeah, just had a really confusing voice message that I needed to deal with.”

“Who was it?”

“Not sure,” Dean replied. He turned the ignition on and started pulling the Impala out of the diner’s parking lot.

Another five minutes and they were pulling up outside their motel room. Sam was first out of the car, bounty in tow, but Dean almost collided into the back of him as he stood, petrified in front of their already, partially open motel room door. There were several bloody fingerprints on the doorframe.

Dean stepped past Sam, pulling his handgun from the back of his jeans, pushing the door open all the way. Books had been knocked from the table onto the floor. Drawers were open. Clothes had been spilled all over the floor. Y/N’s phone was still on the table.

“DEAN?!” Sam yelled.

“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this, Sammy.”

“Don’t ‘Sammy’ me, Dean, where the hell is Y/N?”

Dean pulled his cell out of his pocket, looking away from Sam, as he handed his phone to him.

Sam put the food down on the table and looked at the text messages Dean had left the phone on. He slumped to the seat that had been left standing and put his right hand through his hair, not wanting to believe what he was reading.

**Harriet: What is she?**

**Me: A friend.**

**Harriet: You know what I mean. What is she?**

**Me: None of your business.**

**Harriet: Tell me.**

**Me: No.**

And so the messages went on and on.

“That voicemail, Dean?” Sam asked, still looking at Dean’s cell. “Was that Harriet?”

Sam looked up at Dean. Dean gulped, his face was riddled with guilt. “Yeah, said she was in town on a case.”

Getting up from the seat, Sam shoved Dean’s cell in his brother’s chest and stormed out of the motel room. He could hear Dean quickly following behind him, closing the motel room up behind. Sam got into the passenger seat of the Impala.

“We’ll find her, Sam,” Dean said as he dropped into the driver’s seat.

“Any idea where Harriet is?” Sam asked, his voice cold, his hands gripping his knees.

“Yeah, either some warehouses on the opposite side of town or an abandoned bar one of her friends use to own,” Dean replied, starting the engine.

“You knew enough to already research her? Why the hell didn’t you say anything, Dean?!”

“Because I thought she wasn’t going to follow through.”

“There was blood on the doorway, Dean. Blood… Y/N might not be able to die, but we both know there are things worse than death.” Sam’s voice was a low, half-growl, half-snarl. He was finding it hard to restrain himself.


	3. Secrets

The Mark was an annoying itch on his arm as he steered the Impala towards the more industrialised side of town. Dean had obviously hoped they would have been long gone by now, but as he mentally kicked himself in the ass, again and again, Dean wanted to throw up and beg for some kind of mercy. Each time Dean caught Sam looking at him, he felt his stomach sink lower.

Dean just couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. He now realised the lack of being around other hunters for quite some time, meant that he was no longer use to the way they often reacted to people or things that they didn’t think were normal. He had a lesson in where that could go, sat right beside him, and Dean didn’t know how forgiveness would find him, if it ever could.

Stopping outside the warehouses he’d mentioned, Sam said nothing to Dean as he walked round to the trunk, popped it, and picked out the hardware he wanted. When the trunk was slammed closed, Sam didn’t say bye as he started walking towards the concrete hulks. Dean didn’t try calling after his brother, he just pulled away and started for the abandoned bar that Harriet’s friend had left derelict.

Pulling up outside the bar in a less than stellar part of town, Dean discreetly picked up some gear from the trunk of the Impala before heading around to a side alley. Finding a side door, paint peeling, rust showing through, Dean crouched down and picked the lock, opening it easily. Checking his surroundings one more time, sure he wasn’t being watched, Dean pulled out a handgun and a torch.

The wooden floorboards inside were covered in dust, and his boots make small dust clouds rise as he carefully checked out the building. What little light was filtering in through boarded or painted windows just showed more dust. Finding some footprints on the ground floor heading up the stairs, Dean followed the trail.

Reaching what must have been an area for private ‘parties’, plus poles and a stage, Dean saw the hallmarks of a hunter’s hold out. Duffel bags, research books, an open laptop. And a couple of guns, knives and a grenade for extra good measure. There was a sleeping bag near the stage.

Standing beside an old table, Dean flicked through Harriet’s hunting journal, frowning at the way she described dealing with some of the cases she’d taken on. The first entry was about changelings in her home and she’d… Dean swallowed hard and went on to the next entry.

“Today, I cleansed a nest out on the outskirts of Little rock,” Dean read out loud. He knew she was referring to vampires, but Harriet had said ‘cleansed’ rather than ‘cleared out’ and that was what got Dean worried as he flipped forwards to more recent entries, covering Y/N.

“The young woman the Winchesters have aligned themselves with is clearly not human,” Dean read to the mouldering bar. “Her ability to sense those ghouls was not natural. Of course, I know those boys have a habit of aligning themselves with the scum that feeds off…”

Swallowing hard, Dean closed the journal and started back out of the private bar. He needed to get to get back to the warehouse. And then he heard the floorboards creaking gently ahead of him and he raised his handgun. Wood splintered behind him without warning, as a bullet was loosed from the stranger’s weapon.

Diving behind the old stage, Dean returned fire. More bullets showered him with old plaster and splinters. Risking a look, Dean peeked out from the stage and saw a figure standing half in shadow. He fired at their right knee.

“FUCK!” Cried a man’s voice as Dean vaulted from his position and got in close enough to kick the man’s gun away.

“Start talking: who the hell are you, AND WHERE’S HARRIET?” Dean yelled at the man who was now gripping at his right knee to stop the blood.

“D-David Hudder,” cried the man. “She’s over in the old upholsterers.” That was in the area he’d left Sam.

Dean pulled out his cell and dialed Sam’s number. It rang, but there was no answer.

“Shit,” Dean muttered. He hung and stowed his cell.

“I don’t... get why... you’re protecting that monster,” David said between sharp intakes of breath.

“Because, David, she’s not a damn monster, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!” Dean twisted his handgun and whipped the hunter across the face, knocking him out stone cold on the floor. Dean walked away, not caring if David bled out from his wound.

Reaching the Impala once more, Dean tried to ignore the thumping of his heart as he headed back to where he’d dropped Sam. Breaking speed limits, Dean didn’t care, he needed to reach them.

He looked for a moment in the rearview mirror and as the tyres screeched along the road, he couldn’t help his mind drifting back to the first time he’d been given a lift by Y/N on the back of her motorbike. They’d needed to head three towns over from the Bunker to pick up a book for research about the Mark, but Sam hadn’t been feeling so hot and Dean had already been drinking that night. They didn’t think the bookshop would have called them at gone ten at night, but the owner had.

Y/N drove the bike at speeds that Dean didn’t think her capable of, but the green Kawasaki had been like putty between her legs, answering to her and her only. Dean had respect someone who could ride that well. Of course, as he’d clung on to Y/N’s waist, he couldn’t help being that close to her ass and not feel something, but Y/N had ignored him and ridden the bike like a pro. They got the book and…

He was at the warehouse. Nothing remarkable could be seen from the outside.

Nothing. Dean parked up. This time, as he looked through the trunk of the Impala, he picked up a shotgun. Unsure of how many pieces he wanted to leave Harriet in.


	4. Open

In some ways, you wish you were tied up back in that house with the demon that had taken you from Crowley. At least then you were in a wooden chair and could bash and break your way out of being restrained, but as you return to life again under Harriet’s gaze, you realise that some things are perhaps worse than death.

Harriet had put you back together, at least for now, but she was trying new and different ways to kill you.

“This is for the boys’ own good,” Harriet had mumbled to herself before killing you with the previous monster deterrent - a silver knife to the heart. Now as you lay there on the table, eyes staring up into the warehouse’s rafters, the bloodied knife resting on top of your stomach, having been pushed out by your body, you wish you could just get out of there.

“Hmm, I’ll need to have a think about what to try next,” Harriet declares and wanders off.

With Harriet off somewhere else in the building’s expanse, having a break from torture, because that was what it all was by this point, you try to figure out how many times you’ve died today. But you can’t this point, you feel emotionally tired. Harriet had been way too amused when she observed your anti-possession tattoo repair itself when she’d tried to burn it off of you. Chuckled when various poisons, from mushrooms to household cleaners, left you gasping.

Of course you are praying that Sam or Dean find you, but they’d been off working a case and so you didn’t even know if they knew you were missing from the motel room yet.

As Harriet’s footsteps echo towards you once more, you brace yourself.

“Now, maybe we could stop,” Harriet schmoozes as she she reaches the examination table once more. “But you’ll have to tell me what you are.”

“I already told you, I’m a damn alchemist.”

“Look, tell me you’re a witch and maybe this can all stop.”

“I’m not a witch. I don’t do spells or incantations. I don’t worship any demons.”

“But-”

“Look, I can’t die because I’ve achieved the ultimate goal in alchemy, its magnum opus, I made a Philosopher’s Stone. I’ve drunk the Elixir of Life, turned base metals into gold. I am not a witch.” You can feel your weariness steep further. You’ve already gone through this conversation six times already.

“Then how do you make a Philosopher’s Stone?”

“I can’t tell you, Harriet, it would melt your brain.”

“Bullcrap!” The older woman cries before picking up a loaded hypodermic from the trolley near the table and injecting you again, this time with something that smells suspiciously like anti-freeze.

The dose is large enough and you find yourself cramping and spiralling, knowing where you’re heading and unable to stop it until your immortality kicks in again. But in death, there’s a chance your soul will dream…

You’re in the back of your red Chevy convertible, Sam towering over you as he rains kisses down all over your face. You were meant to have gone clothes shopping, instead you’d headed out to a creek and parked up. It was quiet and isolated and Sam was enjoying every stolen moment with you.

But as the two of you kiss, Sam’s face distorts and changes, and suddenly, you’re not in the Chevy and you’re not with Sam. The man’s face looks familiar and you feel a warmth towards him, but he’s not Sam. This figure has a blonde buzzcut and deep brown eyes.

“Who are you?” You ask the man

“You know,” he says, pulling himself into a kneeling position so that you can sit up. You sit up and bang your head on the car roof. You’re in the back of an old Volkswagen Beetle.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t place your face.”

The man leans in towards you and you let him kiss your face. You close your eyes.

“Y/N?” Sam asks. You’re back in your red Chevy convertible, by the creek you visited, several days after getting your soul back. Sam is towering over you.

“It’s nothing,” you reply and lift your head up to kiss him.

Tenderly, you allow your fingers to crawl under Sam’s shirts and start exploring his chest, kneading and stroking his skin as you go, before playfully teasing his left nipple with your right hand. That gets you a full blown attack of tongue from Sam and as you try to equalise with his dominance - Sam is gone.

And you open your eyes and the warehouse’s rafters greet your gaze. Twisting your head to the right and then to the left, you ascertain that Harriet is not currently with you. You sigh and experimentally pull at the straps tying you down to the examination table. And that’s when you hear it.

A tiny snick as the buckle, finally fatigued from your worrying, snaps. You shake your left hand free, ignoring the inquisitive side of your mind that wants to remember who buzzcut dude is, and begin working on undoing the strap on your right hand. You make easy work of it and then get your legs uncoupled.

The whole warehouse is silent, except for your short, sharp breaths as you look for your clothes and find them discarded behind the examination table. You dress yourself, hoping that Harriet won’t suddenly reappear. Buttoning your combats and pulling on your boots, you smell Sam before you see him. You spin and he puts a finger to his lips, asking for quiet as he stealthily approaches and reaches your side, his gun lowered.

“Where’s Harriet?” Sam whispers.

“No idea,” you whisper back.

And then you catch Sam looking at the examination table and the trolley beside it.

“Y/N-”

“We don’t have time for this Sam.” You finish buttoning up your shirt.

And then you get a waft of Harriet as she re-enters the space - smelling like all kinds of death - and you turn to face her. She’s pointing a gun at Sam. Your throat grows thick.

“Sam, get away from her,” Harriet calls across the warehouse. “You don’t know what she is.”

“Harriet, look, just put the gun down and we can talk about this,” Sam replies.

“She’s not human, Sam! This is for your own good.”

“Harriet-”

You stand in front of Sam and take the bullet intended for him, into your right shoulder. Fighting through the sudden pain and ignoring the blood pouring out of the wound, you scream at Harriet. “FOR FUCK’S SAKE, YOU GODDAMN BITCH! PUT THE FUCKING GUN DOWN! I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT THE STONE!”

“No, you come to me!”

Sam grabs you by the left arm. “Don’t!” He cries.

“She can’t do any worse,” you mutter as you begin to walk to Harriet.

And as you walk towards Harriet, you smell leather and bourbon. But you know Dean won’t make it to you in time.

Soul or no soul: Harriet is about to wish she’d never met you.


	5. Down By The Creek

The day had been warm and Sam knew that Y/N didn’t really want to go shopping for some new clothes. Even though she needed them, on account of wrecking so much while she’d been minus a soul. But who wants to try on clothes when the weather was just that damn nice?

Sam had let his hair fly out behind him as Y/N allowed herself to be given directions to a creek a couple of towns over. Pulling up, alone, it hadn’t taken Sam much to coax Y/N onto the backseat. They’d kissed - with Y/N tasting like chocolate and mint on account of the ice cream they’d stopped for halfway there - stroked and tickled to the sound of insects. When Sam had finally eased his right hand between them, he pushed it inside Y/N’s combats and panties, he found that she had already soaked through.

Teasing in his middle finger between Y/N’s folds, he felt himself hardening to the sensation of Y/N slicking up his fingers as he added his index to the middle finger inside Y/N while he stroked her. Teasing her face with kisses, Sam felt Y/N’s face grow flushed as she started to grind down onto this hand.

“Sam,” Y/N murmured against Sam’s face.

“Yes?”

“I need you inside me, please.”

Sam pulled himself up high enough so that he could check their surroundings - he couldn’t see any other sentient life in their immediate vicinity. There wasn’t even the sound of distant traffic. Coming back down to Y/N, he pulled his fingers out of her, but before he could undo his jeans, Y/N sat up and helped Sam ease himself out of his jeans and boxers. He slicked his already hard cock with the cooling juices on his right hand. Y/N wriggled out of her combats and panites and then spread herself out below him once more.

Smiling, Sam eased himself back down to Y/N, and then, gently, began to push his cock inside her, inch by inch. Feeling her encase him, a slight tightness still there, sent a shiver down Sam’s spine as he let Y/N pull his face down to her. And as Y/N teased her tongue into Sam’s mouth, Sam started to thrust, slowly. Despite Y/N’s original desperation, Sam didn’t want to go fast, he wanted to go slow.

His hips continued their gentle rhythm as Sam pulled away from Y/N’s kisses and he gazed down on her, sun filtering through the surrounding trees in such a way that a golden halo surrounded her head. Sam was between the legs of an angel, so to speak, and he wanted to gaze upon the beauty he’d stolen for the afternoon.

“I love you, Y/N,” Sam said, his voice slightly tight with the emotion of the moment, with how perfect everything was.

“I love you too, Sam,” Y/N had answered, tilting her hips down more, gaining a touch more friction.

Allowing himself to go a little faster, Sam sucked down on Y/N’s collarbone, eliciting a gasp, and he pulled away to see the love bite for a moment, before the purple-red mark drifted back to Y/N’s normal skin tone. When he’d originally realised, months ago, that he couldn’t cover Y/N in hickies, Sam had been a little disappointed, but as he took some of the flesh of Y/N’s right shoulder and bit and sucked and heard her moan once more, he was glad that the sensation felt good to her.

Y/N put her hands around his face and pulled him back to her mouth, kissing Sam desperately. Sam started to speed up, and groaned with the increased friction as Y/N angled her hips upwards more. The Chevy began to bounce more noticeably on its suspension as Sam pounded more deeply into Y/N. And then he felt Y/N clench around him, her legs tightening as her breath hitched and she let her orgasm wreck through her body, her mouth open and unmoving against his, as she tried to keep noise to a minimum.

It was enough for Sam, and he pulled up from Y/N so that he could look into her eyes as he shuddered, spilling into her...

Sam remembered looking deeply into Y/N’s eyes in that moment, as he stepped into the warehouse, walking through an artificial hallway, hoping he’d be able to steal an afternoon like that again.

The hulking space was silent. Disgustingly silent, but it was the last warehouse and if he didn’t find Y/N here, then he hoped Dean would find her. Entering the main space of the structure, Sam could see a tiny circle of light that enclosed Y/N’s standing form as she quickly dressed.

But he couldn’t have imagined how things would spiral out from that point. He couldn’t dare to raise his handgun, as Harriet and Y/N approached each other, Y/N’s promise hanging between them.

Sam felt his shoulders tense and his breathing quicken. He wished Dean was there. Sam was worried about not knowing what Y/N was really about to do.

Y/N and Harriet stopped walking towards each other when there was only a foot between them.

“You want to know about the stone?” Sam heard Y/N ask.

Harriet kept her gun trained on Sam. “Yes.”

“Then come closer.”

“Don’t try anything, or your boyfriend will get a bullet through his chest,” Harriet warned as Sam watched the hunter lean into Y/N.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement, and Sam turned to see Dean come running across the warehouse. But it didn’t matter: Y/N was whispering to Harriet.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Screamed Harriet, as she threw her hands to her ears and backed away from Y/N. Harriet’s eyes were closed as blood poured out from her ears. Slowly, Harriet crumbled to the warehouse floor, pulling herself into a foetal position, muttering to herself again and again.

Sam started running to Y/N, joining Dean by her side only a moment after his brother.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Sam asked, looking down on Harriet.

“I told her a secret,” Y/N replied, her voice heavy.

“An alchemical secret?” Sam said, staring at the crazed hunter, unsure what to do next.

“Um, yeah.”

Dean leaned down to Harriet and listened to her, before standing up again. “What’s ‘the triumph’?”

Sam looked at Y/N with Dean. If it had been different circumstances, maybe Sam would have found the way that Y/N looked at the floor, while playing with her necklace, cute. But a woman was bleeding out of her ears and muttering the same words again and again.

“The ‘triumph’ is the stone,” Y/N answered plainly. “Look, guys, stop looking at me like that. I’d never do this to either of you or someone you cared for.”

“What about Harriet?” Sam asked, a fearsome anger beginning to bubble up in his chest.

And then Sam felt his heart miss a beat, and his shoulders sag as Y/N replied plainly, her voice unchanged: “She killed me today. She killed me more times than I count. Stabbed. Slashed, poisoned in more ways than I care to remember.”

Sam tried to reach out for Y/N as she turned and started making her way out of the warehouse.

“Fuck,” Sam said.

“I’ll take care of this mess,” Dean said, his voice solemn. “You go after her.”


	6. Oil

He hadn’t expected to find Y/N in the garage that day. She’d been resting up after getting her soul back, but he figured she needed a few more days to adjust and just chill. Instead, Dean found her tipping a glass flask of something bright blue in colour into the tank of her Kawaski.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Dean asked, walking up to Y/N. He had been planning on doing some work on the Impala.

“Just, y’know, stuff,” Y/N sheepishly replied. She put the glass flask down on a near by shelf and began screwing the lid back on the bike’s tank.

“I can see that: what did you just put in the tank?”

“I’d rather not say, but don’t worry, my bike will be fine.”

“Okay,” Dean looked over at Baby. “You haven’t poured any of that stuff in anything else here, have you?”

“No, Dean, I haven’t. Just my bike and my red Chevy.”

“You’ve used that stuff in your Chevy too?!” It was, for Dean, almost as bad as hearing that something had been done to Baby. He felt his breathing quicken a little.

“Stop panicking, Dean.”

Y/N had started walking back into the Bunker proper at that point. “Woah, where do you think you’re going?” Dean asked.

“I’m was gonna do some baking,” Y/N had called back before disappearing around the corner and out of sight.

*

Baby was fine, but as Dean went to wash and change out of his now oily, grubby clothes, he couldn’t bring his feet to take him towards the showers. The scent of cake and pie coming from the kitchen was too much.

Entering the reasonably clean space, Dean tried not to touch anything with his filthy hands. Y/N wasn’t there for the moment. Dean turned to find Cas sat in a corner, on a stall, the counters surrounding him were covered in brownies and several pies.

“Cas?” Dean said, surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”

“Y/N had said you were busy.” Cas was holding on to a glass bowl that he was carefully stirring the battery contents of. “So I decided to help her. She’s baking me a cake that she says is based on the principles of molecular gastronomy. I am hoping that it will taste nice… that I can taste it.”

“Okay, well, uh, I’ll leave you to it.” Dean stepped out of the kitchen and started heading back towards the showers. As he rounded a corner, he bumped into Y/N, sending her crashing to the floor.

“Sorry,” Dean blurted out. “I’d help you up, but, uh….” Y/N looked up at him and he watched her take in his filthy state. She anxiously looked down at her own clothes and Dean noticed her breathing calm a little as she realised that no oil had transferred on to her.

Y/N got up from the floor and studied Dean. “You know, I think there’s one bit of you not covered in some oil.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, just bring your head a little closer.”

Dean leaned in closer to Y/N. She kissed his nose.

“There’s oil on my mouth?”

“U-huh. Dean, go and have a shower,” Y/N replied before carefully walking around him and heading back towards the kitchen.

It was this memory of Y/N that Dean chose to conjure as he looked down at Harriet.

“The triumph, the triumph, the triumph, the triumph…” The hunter kept muttering to herself.

A door slammed elsewhere in the building and Dean raised his shotgun and pointed it towards the figure of David as he came shambling in, limping. Before the other hunter was halfway towards Dean and Harriet, he stopped dead in his tracks.

“What’s happened to Harriet?” David called.

Dean looked between Harriet and David. Trying to figure how best to put it. “She flew too close to the Sun,” was Dean’s reply.

David slowly stepped closer until he was an arm’s reach away from Dean. “Did that ‘thing’ do this to Harriet?”

Feeling his blood beginning to heat up, Dean held himself back from pistol whipping David again. “She has a name, and it’s Y/N. And only after Harriet killed her more than a dozen times and threatened to shoot Sam.

“I think your pal got off lightly.”

David looked Dean, a clear hatred burning behind his eyes. Dean kept his gun levelled at the hunter.

“I-”

“Now, you’re going to take your friend here, and you’re going to crawl under some rock and never crawl out of it. If you think Y/N is a monster, then she is nothing compared to the monsters the two of you are.”

“Wai-”

“Shut up. I saw her damn journal. I saw that thing and now I can’t unsee it and it was all kinds of… They were children! You could have saved them… Just, crawl under a rock and stay there.”

Dean turned his back and began to walk away from David and Harriet, but as the air moved behind him, he grabbed David’s gun arm and broke it. David’s handgun clattered to the floor.

“AHHHHHHHHHH!”

“Oh, so it’s like that, huh?” Dean said in a half-growl.

“You broke my fuckling arm!”

“And, could be worse… It’s probably going to be worse...”

“You’re going to let that thing live! Of course it’s worse. You-”

Dean shoved David away and aimed his shotgun at David’s head. “Fuck you.”

BANG!

Dean turned to Harriet and without a second thought -

BANG!

Walking over to one of the warehouse’s walls, Dean found the sprinkler control system and disabled it, before walking back over to the bodies of David and Harriet. He piled the bodies together and then dragged some old wooden pallets over them. Pulling a matchbook out of his jacket pocket and a partially used can of lighter fluid, Dean squeezed the fluid over the pile of wood and flesh and then set the matchbook alight.

There was look of pure disgusted contempt as he threw the flaming matches atop the pile and waited for the flames to catch. The fire caught quickly and as smoke began to fill the space, Dean turned and walked away.


	7. Normal Would Be Nice

Sam caught up with you as you leaned against the side of the Impala, doing your best not to cry. Your breaths are shallow and quick. For a moment you remember the sensation of Harriet slicing into your sternum and you feel like you could be sick. You start to gag. But there’s nothing left in your stomach. Nothing at all.

“Hey, hey…” Sam soothes, reaching his right arm towards you. The gagging sensation resides and you allow yourself to be pulled into a hug. Sam’s scent is soothing as you rest your face against his chest and he strokes your hair.

Sam doesn’t try to get you to talk, instead he just lets the two of you stand there like that, his arms sheltering you. You can’t talk right now, you feel bad about what you did to Harriet, but you also know that it couldn’t have ended any other way.

Despite your best attempts, a sob and then a wail leaves your trembling lips and Sam pulls you even closer to him.

“Y/N, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s all going to be okay. Sssssh, sssssh…”

You blink your tears away best you can and look up at the man who has done so much to try and protect you from yourself and the world. But you’re not normal anymore and you know this. Life after the Elixir can’t be taken away, yet you know you’re not a monster, you’re not a-

“I’m not a monster,” you mutter into Sam’s chest.

“You are anything but,” Sam replies, kissing the top of your head.

You hear the distant sound of a shotgun being fired twice. You smell the gunpowder spilling into the environment. Sam tenses around you.

“Dean-” Sam starts.

Pulling away from Sam, you start running back towards the warehouse and reach the door before Sam, walking a short way in, you stop and see Dean piling pallets on Harriet and some man you don’t recognise. You don’t want to see what Dean’s doing and turn heading back to the door, almost walking into Sam. You hold him back.

“He’s fine, Sam. We… we don’t want to see this.” You gently nudge Sam back out of the building and over to the Impala. You open the nearest rear passenger door and climb inside, Sam following closely behind.

Sam closes the door and you start nuzzling into him. Wondering how worried he is about Dean and how well he’s really coping with all that’s been happening, but you’re not sure how to ask him.

The trunk opens and you listen to Dean stowing his shotgun before closing the trunk and heading to the driver’s seat. You look up from Sam to Dean.

“Everyone okay?” Dean asks, his voice a little husky. He’s looking over the seat at you.

“Yeah,” you reply.

“Good. We’ll swing by the motel, grab our things and get the hell out of here. Oh, and pray that the cops don’t already know out about us,” says Dean as he switches on the ignition and begins maneuvering the Impala away from the warehouse.

“There’s still a bunch of knockout bags in the trunk,” you pipe up.

“Good, well let’s hope we don’t get pulled over then,” Dean grumbles.

*

You were on your way back to the Bunker, peanut butter and chocolate pie perched on your lap. Sam had a fork too and was helping you eat some of it as Dean drove. You’d managed to pick up your things and check out no problem.

But there had been more police cars on the roads before you’d gotten out of the county. The guys had filled you in on the Thinman mess and you’d said what you could about Harriet...

Swallowing a mouthful of pie you sigh.

“What’s up?” Sam asks.

“I was wondering how Harriet became a hunter.”

Dean clears his throat. “You don’t want to know.”

You let Dean’s words hang there. You flash back to the last death memory.

“I saw… something,” you finally say to break the silence.

Sam looks to you. “What do you mean: you saw something?”

Putting your fork down you ask Dean to pull over.

Once the engine is silent, the car resting at the side of the road, you tell them what you saw. “One of the times I died back there, I flashed back to that afternoon at the creek.”

“What afternoon at the creek?” Dean asks.

“Uh,” Sam splutters.

“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I saw some guy that I can’t quite remember. About my age, blonde buzzcut… and I think we need to go back home, like now.”

“You saw something while you were dead and you think you need to head back to your hometown?” Sam asks. “How-”

“It means something, Sam,” your stomach was bunching up now. And it wasn’t due to the pie. “He’s… important. I can’t place him and I need to find out who he is, but he reminded me of home.”

The guys stay silent.

“Okay,” Dean finally says and turns on the ignition. Blinker going, he does a u-turn on the road and starts heading in the opposite direction to what you’d been going.

“Y/N, what or who do you think it is?” Sam asks, resting a hand on your thigh.

The sun is rising, the sky a brilliant pinkish-orange. You fiddle with your necklace and remember the setting pink ooze you’d left at the Bunker a few days ago. In your mind’s eye, you picture the preserved werewolf’s paw. You’ve got a feeling what he is, but there’s more to it than that.

“I think… I think he’s the reason why I’m here today. Please, we need to go home,” you reply.

Sam slides his hand down your leg and squeezes your knee, and you look up at him and smile. You catch Dean looking at you in the rearview mirror and you smile at him too.

And even though you call it home, it’s not really home anymore. But using that word is a hard habit to break.


	8. Harriet

Once upon a time, deep in the rolling, well-trimmed, green grass lawns of suburbia, Harriet Reynolds had lived the apple-pie-life. Her husband, whom she’d married straight out of college, and her young children were her reason for being. She went to church. She participated in bake-offs. Every other Wednesday she worked at a local soup kitchen. Her rose bushes were the envy of her best friends.

And then, one night, after volunteering late in the kitchens, she returned home to find her husband dead at his workbench and her children become monsters. Rushing through the street and past neighbours’ homes, she discovered that her world was no more. She didn’t know what the monsters were, but she was adamant that she would destroy them, no matter what the cost.

So when the neighbourhood burned down over one night and she didn’t hear the screams of the real children, she knew what she had to do. That she had to set forth and cleanse the world. That there must be more monsters out there.

Falling into the world of hunting, Harriet saw no distinctions and made limited efforts to protect the innocent. It was as if the incident in her home and awakened the true uncaring beast that she really was.

A monster is a monster. That was Harriet’s philosophy. And everything, everyone, that was different was to be removed.

Harriet didn’t yearn for her apple-pie-life, though some nights she would awaken from her sleep, the screams of children polluting her mind. But even though her hands sometimes betrayed her, she kept her notes. In case she needed to remember an extraneous detail to help with the next hunt and the one after that and so on.

David had been such a help after he fixed her up. She’d hurt herself when she tangoed with her third vampires’ nest and while victorious, needed her left arm set. David had joined her then when she’d shown him the head of the nest mother, its true teeth sliding down as she lifted up its top lip.

And for a time, things had been good between her David. Until she’d gone to New Mexico, on the trail of the ghouls. David had fallen in love with a werewolf that Harriet ended up killing and so they had parted ways… until Harriet had told David of the woman travelling with John Winchester’s sons, the same boys that had been there when Bobby Singer died. The same boys who had a habit of falling into nasty habits with the wrong sorts.

Harriet had told David it was their duty to save the men from their folly. Especially after Harriet found out about Vegas and the fall that should have ended the thing that was living with the boys. One short Vine’s worth of footage had been saved and that was it. But it was enough to convince David that it was their job to help save the Winchesters from themselves.

But when the thing had refused to die. Kept coming back. Again and again…

The children would scream in Harriet’s ears and she would step away from the table it was tied on, so that the screaming could be given a chance to stop.

All the talk of alchemy was… confusing. But Harriet could appreciate the helpfulness of being able to survive anything and continuing her great work, with David by her side.

*

When Sally Thomas had entered the morgue, she knew that she didn’t have to see her sister’s remains. But she needed to be sure that it was all over. That the hell of ten years had finally come to some kind of closure, because she needed to be sure.

The survivors needed her to be sure.

The pathologist helped show her an X-ray of a pin that had been left in Harriet’s shoulder since her sister was a teenager. Sally confirmed that her younger sister had had such a thing, not the identification was necessary. The serial number had confirmed that the pin had been used to treat a severe break in Harriet’s shoulder.

Leaving the smalltown morgue, having arranged for a mortician to collect what was left, Sally wasn’t sure what she would do with her sister’s remains. She had, after all, loved her niece and nephew dearly, babysitting for them on a many a night. So she had felt like she’d lost a piece of herself when her sister raised the neighbourhood to the ground.

It’s not the kind of thing you can forgive easily. Nailing doors shut. Igniting the gas mains.

Burning children to death.

Sally would have to put her sister’s remains under a tonne of concrete and hope that would be the end of this tale. Too many people had been hurt.

But at least they could all now be sure that the end of this one life was here. That the monster had been slain.

Rain began to fall in the small Washington town as Sally climbed into her car. She wondered, as she drove away, who had killed her sister, so that she could thank them. Thank them for putting her family to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this part. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Don't worry, there's still more to come. Yep, there is. In the meantime, feel free to leave comments and kudos and don't forget that you can always check in with me at [Dreams from the Bunker](http://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/).


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